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Year: 2020

Nathan

Friends & Family

Daily Post

There may be a disconnect between you and your friends and family when it comes to the viva. Colleagues, peers, your supervisors – they’ll all have an idea of the stakes involved in a PhD and what the viva means. Some of your friends and family, friendly, supportive and lovely, will have no idea.

They see you working, but don’t know how you do it.

They see you busy, but don’t know what you’re doing.

They see you stressed, but don’t know why.

You might have trouble sharing how and what you do, but you can certainly help them with why. Practically, they may be able to do very little to help you prepare – they probably can’t ask you questions, or help you explore expectations, and they won’t be able to look through your thesis to help you annotate it – but they could do a lot to support you and help you feel ready. They can help you create an environment in which you’ll thrive through your preparations and in the viva itself (assuming you have a video viva).

Let your friends and family know why you’re doing what you do, and they’ll find ways to help you.

Nathan

Who Do You Know?

Daily Post

You are the only person who can pass your viva. That does not mean that you have to get ready alone.

Who do you know who can help you prepare?

Who do you know who can help you to feel relaxed?

Who do you know who can ask you relevant questions about your research?

Who do you know who can share their experiences about the viva?

Who do you know who can help you be certain of what to expect?

Who do you know who can support you?

You don’t have to get ready alone.

Nathan

Grumbles

Daily Post

I’m forty in a few months. As much as I like to say, “I’m fine!” whenever anyone asks me about my health, the truth is I’ve started to pick up a few grumbles here and there.

My right knee likes to ache. My lower back shouts at me several times a year. Various pandemic-related restrictions – both externally-ordered and self-imposed – have reduced my overall fitness, and increased my waistline.

Maybe more than a few grumbles! But this is now a time to take stock and do something. Not to skate further in one direction, but change path, look into things that concern me and make them better. Little grumbles get bigger, they won’t just go away, and I won’t always be able to put them to one side probably.

 

What are your viva grumbles? What do you push to one side when perhaps you need to pay a little more attention? If there’s a question, a problem or an idea that you’re concerned about, then you can probably do something to make it better.

Small grumbles with your thesis, your research or your confidence won’t go away by themselves. Nerves about the viva will only magnify any issues. Reflect now on the causes of your grumbles, then figure out what you can do to improve the situation.

Nathan

A Few Thoughts On Feeling Ready

Daily Post

“Ready for the viva” doesn’t mean “not nervous about the viva”.

Ready doesn’t mean perfect in any way.

Ready and prepared aren’t quite the same thing – but they travel in the same car.

Ready for the viva means you’ve practically prepared and found some confidence for the day.

There’s always more that you could do to feel more ready, but a finite list of tasks is sufficient to get you ready.

Ready is personal. What does it mean for you?

Nathan

Clear (To You)

Daily Post

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a landslide…

 

A few weeks ago I was half-humming, half-singing Bohemian Rhapsody as I was tidying up.

“What’s that?!” asked my seven-year-old daughter.

I started singing the song properly. I stayed in tune. I know the words pretty well and thought I did a good job.

When I stopped, I waited for applause and appreciation.

My daughter said, “No, what was that? I don’t know that. Is it new? Or is it really old?”

She could hear all the words, catch the tune, see her dad making a bit of a fool of himself (that’s standard operating procedure), but was at a loss for trying to really get what she was listening to. She’d never heard Bohemian Rhapsody, was unfamiliar with that kind of song or style of music, and so all she got from my virtuoso performance was confusion.

Whereas I thought I was being very clear!

 

Consider, as you prepare for the viva, where you feel you’re clear – in your thinking, in your knowledge, in how you communicate your research – and explore what you could do both to check how clear you are and improve how clear you are. Share your research with friends and ask them about what they understand and what they want to know more about. It’s not enough that you get it: check that they get enough of what you’re trying to share.

You know a lot and can do a lot to have got this far through your PhD. Now check how clear you are when communicating with others – something you’ll have to do when you meet your examiners in the viva.

 

Any way the wind blows…

Nathan

Consulting Your Supervisors

Daily Post

Your supervisors will be able to help with lots of things related to the viva. It’s good to consider them in the role of a consultant.

Consultants take a step back, they’re there to advise: you have to do the work. It’s best to ask highly-targeted questions and make specific requests – both to get the best response from them and respect their time.

  • Before submission they can offer feedback on your research, guidance on your thesis and talk through expectations for the viva.
  • During preparation time they can steer your perspective, share insights into your examiners and perhaps practically help your preparations with a mock viva.
  • After it’s all done they can support you as you deliver on your corrections, and hopefully even find a way to help you celebrate!

There’s lots of possibilities: before you ask for help, consider what you might really need from them. Then focus on asking for that.

Nathan

Most

Daily Post

If most vivas result in success, why would yours be any different?

If most candidates can get ready with only a little work, relative to the rest of their PhDs, what’s different for you?

If most people have a viva that’s two to three hours long, does it matter if yours is longer or shorter?

If most theses need correcting in some way, what’s the problem with you doing yours?

 

If you have a real response to any of these sort-of-rhetorical questions, then in most cases you’ll have to do something. You might have to work more, or get more help than most, or ask for support, or get clarification about how your viva can be made fair.

But for some candidates, you might simply have to think about what’s really going on for you. Think about what might be skewing your point of view, and explore what you could do to change your perspective.

Hold on to this: most vivas, the overwhelming majority, result in success.

Nathan

Action Overcomes Fear

Daily Post

I looked back over the last three years to see how I’d been inspired by Halloween previously:

I’m not going to be silly or spooky today though – this year has had enough fear and worry in it.

If your viva is coming up and you’re worried or afraid, the first step to resolving the situation is to figure out what the problem really is. Ask for help from someone, or think about how you’re going to do something about it. Then do something! And remember why you’re doing it.

Your fears come from somewhere. Beating them comes from you.

Nathan

Mind Your Manners

Daily Post

It may seem like an odd thing to post about, but I’ve been asked about the topic many times before by PhD candidates!

“Is there anything I mustn’t say or do in the viva???”

I don’t think there’s a real danger of being impolite in the viva. You don’t need to look out for anything that wouldn’t occur to you ordinarily about watching what you say, or behaving improperly.

  • Try not to swear maybe? (unless curse words and their origins are the topic for your research!)
  • Don’t insult your examiners? (hopefully obvious!)
  • Don’t be arrogant?

There’s a little ray of worry in the last one. There is a difference between confidence in your work and arrogance at being right. There could be difficulty in balancing talking about the rightness of what you’ve done, as you see it, against questions about alternatives or being sure. That could be tricky. But it doesn’t mean that it should be avoided or obsessed over either.

Talk about alternatives before the viva, in preparation for perhaps needing to talk about it in the viva. Get more comfortable in the trickier parts of your methods and results, then you won’t have to worry about saying the wrong thing.

Nathan

No Hurry, No Pause

Daily Post

The work of Tim Ferriss has helped me a lot over the last decade. I’ve enjoyed all of his books, but one of his must-read posts that I keep returning to is “Testing The Impossible: 17 Questions That Changed My Life” from 2016.

While the post is about business and lifestyle design, re-reading it for the 73rd time today I’m struck by how so many of the questions resonate with my view on viva preparation too:

  • If I could only work 2 hours per week on my business, what would I do? Leaving business aside, the time restriction is an excellent provocation. What do you need to do first?
  • Am I hunting antelope or field mice? This makes me think of obsessing over typos and what-ifs. You could hunt for endless little things, or focus preparation efforts on the larger “antelope” that will provide you with more!
  • What would this look like if it were easy? A simple prompt. How could your preparations be easy? What conditions would you need? Now which of those can you create?
  • No hurry, no pause. As Tim notes, not a question! But something that has stuck with me personally, and which I think applies really well to viva prep. A little planning before submission goes a really long way. A little organisation makes your preparation come together nicely, stress-free. You might be anxious about your viva still, but your preparation will not be a contributing factor.

I thoroughly recommend the article. See how it might prompt you to reflect on your preparations before the viva. Look for ways to make the process as valuable as it can be.

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